Free Killer Image (An Allison Campbell Mystery) by Wendy Tyson

and the wind screamed. Even inside the car, the other luxury he allowed himself, a tough chill seeped around the windows and doors.
    He thought about Allison and the Feldman murder. What he’d learned about the murder had scared him, for Allison more than Mia. The murder had taken place right in her backyard. And the police had no concrete leads. He wondered if it was just a coincidence that Hank McBride contacted Allison so soon after a Main Line murder. There was no reason to think they were connected, but still. Man, he thought, you’re getting paranoid.
    But Vaughn had acquired a sense about people from his years in that juvenile facility. There, as a scrawny kid with a scarred face, he knew he couldn’t compete with his fists. He’d had to use his brain. He had to know what people were going to do before even they knew and use that knowledge against them. And after a few painful rounds, things he didn’t want to think about, he learned. And now Vaughn prided himself on telling the good from the bad, the honest from the dishonest, the genuine article from the carefully crafted fake.
    And Hank McBride was a fake.
    But if Allison wanted to take the McBrides on as clients, he would respect that. Grudgingly. Allison had her reasons. Just as Vaughn could root out evil intentions, so he could spot when someone’s reality was stretched thin. And although Allison Campbell might think she was happy, he knew that under the thick layer of professional devotion lurked a restless spirit. Yeah, he could relate.
    Headlights snaked their way toward him and he adjusted his position to avoid the glare. He watched the glow grow stronger and then turn into a parking lot, illuminating a crumbling row house wedged between two intact ones. The abandoned house had a caved-in roof and boarded-up doors. In the lot out front sat a child’s Big Wheel. No fancy hedges or flower beds here. Instead, the people living on either side of the condemned house would spend their days swatting cockroaches and chasing rats and hoping some crack head didn’t set up camp in the ruins. He would know. He’d grown up just six blocks away.
    Vaughn turned on to Route 30 and headed back toward the burbs. It wasn’t coincidence that he’d chosen a gym out here in the ‘hood. He made a point to remind himself of where he came from. Every single day. It was too easy to forget what lay on the other side of the Main Line divide. He guessed that’s what he and Allison had in common: neither were natives. But she tried to run from her past. In his own way, he embraced his.
    Vaughn grabbed his cell phone and dialed. On the fifth ring, a soft, husky voice answered, a voice that came to life when he asked if he could visit. “Come,” she said, and he felt himself hardening. “I’ll leave the front door unlocked.”
    He wouldn’t stay all night, he told himself. Just long enough to lose himself in her. Just long enough to get his father and Jamie and all the stuff from years ago out of his head. Just long enough to make her forget her own troubles. Just long enough.
    Mia stared at the receiver, rolled over in bed and stuffed her book back on the bedside shelf. Damn him . She hated the aching need she felt whenever he called or visited. It was a need she could ignore most of the time, a need for human companionship, pure and simple. The very fact of their differences, differences that went well beyond the color of their skin and the twenty years that separated them, created safety in their relationship. Mia knew that. Just like she knew that Vaughn would never betray her. Not like her ex-husband Edward, not like Jason and his ex-wife Allison, and, she hated to admit it, not like her daughter Bridget.
    Death was the greatest betrayal, after all.
    Mia swung her feet over the side of the bed and switched on the bedside lamp. Her eyes scanned the small room for clutter. Not that Vaughn would care. She held no illusions as to why he came. Poor Vaughn, with his striking